THE ROCK REVOLUTION

This certainly has enough to satisfy (satiate?) any youngster caught up in the NOW sound and it is a much more considered assessment than Nik Cohn's Rock From the Beginning (1969, p. 344) even if it lacks the same visual effects. Mr. Shaw has watched Tin Pan Alley give way to Penny Lane (he was the first to put the Pelvis on the New York wavelengths) and here he does an exhaustingly thorough job of tracing the evolution of Rock's many forms from original rockabilly to the areas that fall under the ""umbrella of folk rock""--protest, attitude, and psychedelic. One of the most enlightening aspects of the book is the revelation that most of the original rock and roll hits were previously written and recorded by Negro artists who might have been back in Stephen Foster's Camptown as far as disc jockeys and recording studios were concerned. Just about every artist and group is lovingly dissected here with the help of their own comments, critics like Richard Goldstein, Nat Hentoff, etc., and dissertations from everything from Newsweek to Eye Magazine. Mr. Shaw is to be congratulated for his dogged persistence and his knowing, pertinent summaries. An excellent perspective for older audiences as well.